The game is set in ancient Persia, although the exact century is
not revealed. In the game, the player assumes the role of the Prince, whose name is not revealed in the
game. The Prince is accompanied by a woman named Elika, whom he met after a large sandstorm
diverted him from his course and he ended up in a mysterious land.
Players traverse many different environments using the Prince's
acrobatic abilities to scale walls and even crawl on the ceilings.
Throughout the journey, players combat various enemies as they
attempt to cleanse the land of corruption. The game's storyline and
setting borrow heavily from Zoroastrianism.[6]

Contents

Gameplay

Prince of Persia revolves around gameplay mechanics
that producer Ben Mattes identifies as "pillars" of the Prince of
Persia series; an acrobatic hero exploring a Persian
environment with a balanced mixture of acrobatics, combat, and
puzzle-solving.[7]
The premise of Prince of Persia is that the player travels
around the game world to heal specially designated spots of land.
The game only features a single player mode. The player assumes the
role of the Prince character, and is
accompanied by the AI-controlled companion named
Elika.
The player can use the Prince character's acrobatic prowess, sword,
and gauntlet, as well as magic from Elika to perform combat and
acrobatic feats variously throughout the game.

Prince of Persia features open-world exploration that
allows the player to travel to any spot in the game world at any
given point, and allows the player to witness the plot in any way
they want. Depending on how the player progresses, previously
visited areas will become more challenging to traverse when the
play re-visits them.[8]
However, when the player heals a spot of land, it becomes void of
traps. The traps are manifested in various forms of the antagonist
Ahriman's Corruption; black-colored blobs that coat the land and
swallow the player if touched.[8]
The player can use acrobatics maneuvers to avoid these traps.

The player has many acrobatics maneuvers at their disposal.
Acrobatics are also used in combat to vault over enemies, or hit
them into the air. Sometimes when performing these acrobatics, the
player is aided by Elika. There are magical plates that allow the
player to perform even more complicated acrobatic feats via Elika.
If the player fails to signal Elika's magic, they fall off of the
plate, sometimes to their death.

The player can not conventionally "die" in Prince of
Persia. Rather, when an enemy is about the strike the
finishing blow, or The Prince presumably falls to his death, Elika
saves him. There is not a limit on the number of times Elika can
save a player.[9] Along
with saving the player, Elika can perform many acrobatic feats or
combat feats in tandem with the player. The downloadable content
Epilogue added a new magic plate that allows Elika to
recreate destroyed objects. A new combat maneuver for the player
was also added.[10]

Plot
synopsis

Setting

Prince of Persia takes place in an undefined ancient
Persian city-state[11]
based heavily around the religion of Zoroastrianism.[6]
A thousand years before the events of the game take place, there
was a struggle for power between the gods Ahriman and Ormazd. The outcome of the struggle was
that Ormazd and his people, the Ahura, managed to imprison Ahriman
and his minions, the Corrupted, in a tree. Ormazd then left the
world, leaving the Ahura to make sure Ahriman remains secure. They
are successful for a thousand years, at which point the Ahura
started to believe that Ahriman and Ormazd were myths due to their
inactivity, and most departed. Shortly before the events of the
game, Ahriman is about to be freed again.[11]

Characters

Prince of Persia's protagonist is the Prince character, a
nameless adventurer in search of fortune. The Prince is accompanied
by an Ahura named Elika, whose race has forsaken the duty given to
them by the god of light, Ormazd, and intend to set free the main
antagonist, Ahriman.[12]
Ahriman is the god of darkness who was imprisoned by Ormazd. He is
intent on conquering the entire universe upon his liberation.[13]
The Mourning King appears as an antagonist, intent on fulfilling
his deal with Ahriman in return for the resurrection of his
daughter, Elika. The Corrupted, four rulers Ahriman chose to aid
him in conquering Ormazd, also appear as antagonists. They were
imprisoned with him for a thousand years.

The Hunter is one of the Corrupted. He was a prince who enjoyed
hunting, but soon became too good at hunting. Ahriman successfully
made a deal with the Hunter that, in exchange for his soul, Ahriman
would allow him to hunt a creature more satisfying than any he has
hunted before.[14]
Another of the Corrupted is the Alchemist. He was an Ahura
scientist who felt he was close to achieving immortality when his
health started to fail. The Alchemist asked Ormazd for a longer
lifespan to complete his research, but when he was refused, Ahriman
offered him immortality in exchange for his soul. The third
Corrupted is called the Concubine. She was a woman skilled in
politics who revered men of power. She was involved with a man, but
was ultimately beaten by another woman, scarred and stripped of her
beauty and influence. The Concubine then exchanged her soul for the
power of illusion with Ahriman.[15]
The final Corrupted is the Warrior. He was a king whose country was
under siege. Struggling for peace, the king accepted power from
Ahriman that allowed him to vanquish his enemies and secure peace
for his people. When the war was over, however, the peace-loving
citizens rejected the Warrior, who had turned in to a tool of
war.[16]

Plot

Prince of Persia begins as the Prince character is traversing the desert
during a sandstorm. The Prince runs into Elika,
who is fleeing. He accompanies her to the tree that imprisons
Ahriman and his minions. Elika attempts to secure Ahriman, but the
Mourning King ultimately frees him. The Prince character and Elika
then travel the land, healing special spots of Ormazd's power
called fertile grounds, in order to stop Ahriman from harvesting
the power. After the duo heals the land, they return to the tree.
There Elika gives her life to seal Ahriman back into the tree. The
Prince then destroys the tree, using its energy to resurrect Elika,
which frees Ahriman in the process.

Development

Proof of conception for Prince of Persia was found in
September 2006, when a file that was leaked to the internet was
found to contain concept art for the game,[17]
although Ubisoft didn't announce the game until May 2008. They
stated that they expected to release the game towards the fourth
quarter of 2008, and gave details about the plot and game play. In
one such preview of the game, they revealed that the general
staples of the game play remained intact, although altered
drastically. These staples are platforming, combat, and
puzzle-solving. It was also revealed that the game's combat would
be one-on-one fights, similar to the original Prince of
Persia trilogy, rather than fighting hordes of enemies at any
time, as in the Sands of Time series. Producer
Ben Mattes stated that the intent in changing the combat so
drastically was to give players the impression that each enemy was
a unique and dramatic experience in itself.[7]Prince of Persia utilizes a heavily-modified version of
the Scimitar engine, which was also used in Assassin's
Creed. Developers chose to use this engine because it
would allow them to enhance the game by adding more expansive
worlds, and less linearity.[7]
In May 2008, Ubisoft released two official videos of a concept
artist designing the Prince character and Elika.[18] One
video shows the Prince character being drawn, while the other
details Elika.[19] Yet
another fast-forward concept art emerged in July 2008, this time
depicting an antagonist: the Hunter.[20]
Unlike previous Ubisoft games such as Assassin's
Creed, the PC version of Prince of Persia
contains no digital rights
protection.[21]

Mattes said that when Ubisoft was initially developing the game,
cooperative gameplay with an AI-controlled partner was the main
idea they wanted to build on. Mattes explained, "We knew from day
one basically [cooperative gameplay] was the hook that was going to
replace Sands of Time...We didn't always know that it was going to
be Elika from day one...We sort of explored the idea of maybe a
child or father figure or brother, or something like that."[22]
The idea to base the game around AI-controlled functions came from
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Mattes explained that
the team felt the relationship between Farah
and the Prince
character worked well from a story-telling point-of-view in
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, so they decided to
expand on the concept.[22]

Downloadable content

Downloadable content for Prince of Persia, titled
Epilogue, was confirmed by Ben Mattes in an interview with
IGN. Mattes said that the new content would include new areas to
explore, new enemies, new combat maneuvers, and a new power for
Elika to use.[23] The
content was planned for release on February 26, 2009 on the Xbox
360 and PlayStation
3 consoles,[24]
but was delayed one week until March 5, 2009.[25]
Citing business reasons, Ubisoft is not releasing this
Epilogue content for the game's PC version. [26]

The game was well received by most critics, scoring an 81%, 85%,
and 82% on Metacritic
for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC, respectively.[27][28][29]IGN writer Hilary Goldstein praised
the game for its simple but visually spectacular acrobatics and
combat, but noted that one must "embrace the change [to the
series]" in order to "fall in love [with it]."[35]
Goldstein also praised Elika, the secondary character of the game,
as a useful sidekick during gameplay and also as a likeable
character.[35]
The GameSpot reviewer
shared a similar opinion and in addition praised its excellent
artistic design.[34]
However, many criticized the game for being too easy or
"consumer-friendly," regarding the simple platforming and combat
segments.[35][32][34]
Eurogamer described it as a "poor game" with "excessive repetition"
but nonetheless with "fantastic technology and interesting
mechanics."[32]
1UP.com criticized the trial-and-error nature of the platforming
gameplay.[30]

Sales

Prince of Persia was the fourth best-selling game on
the Playstation 3 in December 2008, but sold
only 483,000 units on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 combined.[36]
Ubisoft later released sales figures showing that Prince of
Persia has sold over 2.2 million copies worldwide as of
January 2009.[37]